Saturday, March 10, 2018

Persephone Book Collection

My very first introduction to Persephone books was completely accidental .... accidental yet fabulous . It was Mariana by Monica Dickens ( Charles Dickens great grand child ) . If I am honest I only picked it up because the cover was beautiful and it caught my interest . So anyway , I took it home , put it on the shelf then carried on about my day . Months later while doing the obligatory dusting of the bookshelves ( the one bookish chore that is rather tedious) and this gorgeous book peaked my interest yet again , so I gave in and went on to read it that night . Friends ... I was in love .

This gentle story with no huge bouts of excitement was dreamy and delicious, and while perched up in bed with a hot drink and this book I really could not have been any happier . This is why I love these books .

For the most part the stories are sweet and gentle and completely relaxing to read which is what I want from books most of the time. I do love Stephen King but no offense to Stephen , his stories do not make for carefree dreams if you read them before sleep ... Cujo and IT have spent far too many nights chasing me in dreams ;0)

So , Mariana started a love affair with Persephone books . I then learned all I could about how the shop came about , who they were publishing and why . A beautiful shop in Bloomsbury , 59 Lamb’s Conduit Street and inside a beautiful selection of dove grey covered books ( primarily) with those gorgeous colorful end papers Persephone lovers adore talking about .... and rightly so .

I don’t have a huge collection of these books , my dream of course is at some point to collect them all but for now let me show you these beauties that I do have .

Cheerful Weather For The Wedding by Julia StracheyMiss Buncle’s Book by DE StevensonKitchen Essays by Agnes JekyllGood Evening Mrs Craven : The Wartime Stories Of Mollie Panter -DownesThe Home Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher Miss Pettigrew Lived For A Day by Winifred Watson Mariana by Monica Dickens